"You've got your suit on backwards, SBE"

Love sea life

Scuba Diving in the North Sea from Norfolk

Thousands of shipwrecks have sunk around the UK over the
last few hundred years caused by a variety of reasons:

Collision

Poor design

Running aground

Bad weather

Warfare

The greatest cause from the above list is Warfare, and unfortunately
for those poor sailors in World War 2, the area around the North Sea coast had
a disproportionate number of shipwrecks caused by mines, torpedoes, shelling and
aircraft. The reasons for this:

·
The coast around Norfolk protrudes into the
North Sea creating a funnel that convoys had to squeeze through.

·
Sandbanks focussed the convoys further creating
a duck-shoot for submarines and e-boats.

·
London’s industry required massive amounts of coal
that had to be shipped non-stop from Newcastle.

There
are places with more wrecks, but what makes the North Sea wrecks special is the
depth of the water.

10,000 years ago, the area between the South of England and Holland was low lying grassland,
and over time this flooded to depths that are easily reachable by
recreational scuba divers, so this is by no means deep sea diving.So
with all the shallow shipwrecks on offer why isn’t the North Sea inundated with
divers every weekend? Well
the bad news is that the visibility can be very unpredictable and can vary in
the course of a week between 0.5 meters and 8 meters.With
the funnelling effect and the shallowing of the water tides can be extremely
strong with tidal ranges greater then 7 meters and slack water of less than 5
minutes.Launching
boats from the beaches is tricky and the number of ports is limited.

What
this amounts to is an area that is a unique time capsule for hardy divers who
are prepared to take the risk and give it a go.www.Northseadivers.co.uk is a site written the divers
who explore this area, has tools to help dive planning, shares tales of the
wrecks and gives a taste of the individuals involved.